The advertising landscape continues to evolve, especially as businesses become increasingly reliant on digital platforms and multi-channel strategies. This ever-changing industry is making the best ways to advertise your business less static, as you might find that certain trends in both your industry and the marketing world influence your approach over time.
In this blog, Scott McCutchan, Sr. Director of Paid Media – Franchise, will look at how to advertise your business with some of the most effective strategies available. Depending on your specific needs and your target audience, you’ll be able to select the right channels for your business.
What You’ll Learn:
- Understanding Your Target Audience
- Developing a Strong Brand Identity
- Digital Advertising Strategies
- Measuring and Analyzing Advertising Effectiveness
- FAQs
My Expert Opinion on the Best Ways to Advertise Your Business
With more businesses on the market than ever before and so many advertisers vying for attention, you need to do what you can to stand apart from the competition. Digital advertising is particularly popular, and it continues to be so as it accounts for around 70% of all ad spend across the globe, according to Statista.
If you’re not taking full advantage of the right marketing channels in your industry, you will struggle to be seen at all, let alone climb to the top.
However, you should be highly selective of the channels you choose to get the most from your allotted budget—don’t put all of your eggs into a single advertising bucket. Instead, figure out who you’re marketing to and what kinds of platforms and content speak to that audience.
As you look at what your competitors are doing and conduct market research, you can more definitively answer the question, “How can I market my business?”
Time to dive into the various methods to help you find the right one for your strategy.
Understanding Your Target Audience
The first step you must take before looking at the various platforms is to get a good understanding of your specific target audience.
Learning the ins and outs of your audience can help you decide precisely how to advertise your business to them, making it crucial to look into your audience’s demographics, psychographics, and buying behaviors.
You can learn about your audience through feedback from existing customers in surveys, along with market research by looking at competitors or industry publications that give insights into your target market.
You may also want to segment your audience into different types of audience personas, which could help you tailor your messaging and visuals to each based on the kind of content they respond to most. Different segments might even use different platforms, informing you of where to direct your advertising focus.
Developing a Strong Brand Identity
In answering the question of “how can I market my business,” you will want to develop a clear and distinct brand identity.
This brand identity will largely comprise a unique visual identity, including logos, colors, and typography that set you apart, along with brand messaging that’s unmistakably yours, with an identifiable tone and voice.
Another defining quality of your brand identity will be the values you share with your audience, whether you want to focus on affordability, sustainability, community, or other core values that back your brand mission and vision.
Once you have your identity figured out, be sure to maintain branding consistency across all channels, from digital and print to social and email. As you promote your business through all relevant channels, you’ll begin to build awareness and recognition, leading more people to trust you over competitors.
Digital Advertising Strategies
To get you started on pinpointing the best way to advertise your business, let’s consider some key digital advertising strategies.
1. Pay-Per-Click (PPC) Advertising
One of the best ways to advertise your business across the web is through paid media advertising. This strategy involves bidding on ad space on various platforms.
If you want to know how to advertise your business on Google, you can easily do so using PPC campaigns on Google Ads. These include Search and Display ads, with Search ads appearing much like organic search results, while Display ads can appear on all Google platforms and Google Partner websites.
You can also use other platforms like Bing Ads to connect with audiences through search and display networks, with optimal targeting capabilities.
Some metrics to track to measure these campaigns might include:
- Conversion metrics like click-through rate (CTR), conversion rate, and sales
- ROI measurements such as cost per click (CPC) and cost per acquisition (CPA)
- Brand awareness metrics, including impressions and views
Always conduct A/B testing with your ads before running them, which could help determine which kind of content will resonate most with your audience, and segment your audiences for hyper-targeting visuals and messaging.
Additionally, develop retargeting ad campaigns to reconnect and continually engage with people who left your site without making a purchase.
2. Social Media Advertising
You may also supplement PPC ads with social media advertising on various channels that your audience uses.
There are plenty of platforms you could target, including Facebook Ads, LinkedIn Ads, Instagram Ads, and more.
Knowing how to advertise your business on social media could help you effectively reach audiences where and when they are most active.
Many platforms have hyper-targeting capabilities to help you reach your audiences when they’re most likely to see you.
Metrics to measure for social media ads could include the following:
- Reach and awareness metrics like impressions, potential and actual reach, and share of voice
- Engagement metrics such as likes, shares, and comments, along with CTR and amplification rate, which tracks the rate at which people share your content with their audiences
- Conversion and ROI metrics, which would be similar to PPC metrics like CPC, return on ad spend (ROAS), and CPA
You should also know how to promote your business locally on these platforms if you have specific service areas or physical locations.
3. Influencer Marketing
You could also use influencer marketing to connect with audiences through popular personalities on Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, and other channels.
Many businesses might be tempted to go right for macro-influencers with hundreds of thousands or even millions of followers, but the best way to advertise your small business through influencer marketing is likely via micro-influencers.
These influencers tend to develop a small niche of highly devoted audiences. They also cost less than macro-influencers and celebrities, potentially allowing you to spread your budget across several micro- or nano-influencers to spread your reach.
There are plenty of examples of successful influencer marketing campaigns out there.
One such example involved Topicals, a beauty product manufacturer that has partnered with many smaller influencers on Instagram to showcase its products’ effectiveness.
Meanwhile, Bluehouse Salmon was able to use influencer marketing to get its brand to stand out through influencer-generated videos highlighting the quality of the company’s salmon products. As a result, the company generated over 500 pieces of culinary and educational content that it could repurpose as digital assets for future marketing and advertising efforts.
There are plenty of types of influencer marketing partnerships you can use, such as:
- Giveaways
- Sponsorships
- Product reviews
- Affiliate marketing
- Brand takeovers
- Collaborations
- Challenges, such as branded contests
4. Video Advertising
This can fall under PPC and social media advertising, but video ads are among the most highly effective tools you can use.
People are engaging more and more with short-form video content, including ads that manage to differentiate themselves from the competition. These ads are much more likely to get attention from people than static image ads.
Knowing how to advertise your business on YouTube and other platforms with video could help you maximize engagement and conversions, with interactive ads available on many platforms. Depending on the platform, you could also experiment with both skippable and non-skippable ads.
5. Audio Advertising
If your audience listens to the radio or streaming services like Spotify or certain podcasts, audio ads are among the top ways to advertise.
These ad platforms are particularly great for connecting with commuters who are likely to be listening to their favorite radio stations and streaming platforms on the way to or from work.
Owned Media
As you discover how to advertise your business online and offline, you can also use owned media to supplement digital advertising.
You might be wondering, “How can I market my business with my own company content?” Here are some ideas to get you started.
6. Content Marketing
You can create all kinds of content to promote your business, connect with audiences as they seek more information, and build more trust to drive conversions.
There are plenty of content pieces you can create to reach your audiences, including:
- Blog posts
- Service and product pages
- About us pages
- Videos
- Infographics
- Gated Content
This high-quality content could address various pain points while establishing you as an industry authority on your website and abroad. Just ensure your content is truly helpful and not merely optimized to appeal to search engines.
Once you’ve created your content, use paid media channels to amplify your reach! Run ads to targeted landing pages or promote your blog.
7. Organic Social
Also, use organic social media posts to regularly engage followers on your target platforms. Doing so could help you build a presence while showing that you value interactions with your audiences.
It’s equally helpful to know how to advertise your business locally using organic posts in addition to targeted ads.
For example, Masters Kitchen and Bath is a home renovation company that often posts about various projects and local events using Facebook.
8. Email Marketing
Want to know the best way to advertise your business for free? Email marketing might not be entirely free, but it’s among the most cost-effective marketing tools that you can use to advertise products, giveaways, and much more.
You can use lead forms, newsletter signup forms, and other tools to collect email addresses and build your list, enabling you to continually engage people this way in addition to other platforms.
9. Direct Mail
If you want to discover how to advertise your business locally in a way that truly sets you apart, another great strategy to implement is direct mail.
These mail pieces offer a more tactile way to build a connection with audiences, and they can correspond to your digital advertising campaigns, with QR codes and links that continue the customer journey.
10. Event Marketing
Looking for ways to figure out how to promote your business locally? Event marketing could be another key. Hosting webinars, conventions, seminars, Q&A sessions, and other types of events, both local and online, could connect you with your target communities.
Earned Media
Some of the best ways to advertise your business also include different types of earned media. The following are some of these channels that can supplement the above.
11. Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Potentially, one of the best ways to advertise your business for free is to develop an SEO strategy that works with paid media campaigns.
These strategies involve optimizing website content with keywords, links, structured data, and other components to encourage search engines to rank pages higher for target search queries. It can be highly cost-effective, but it does require a lot of work, and it can take months to see results, requiring patience.
12. Customer Testimonials and Reviews
In discovering how to advertise your business on Google and other sites, you should encourage customers to leave reviews.
You could ask people to leave an honest review on Google, Yelp, or another site in exchange for a potential discount, a raffle entry, or another incentive after making a purchase.
As you gather reviews, you could include them in a dedicated reviews or testimonials page on your website. They will also appear on your Google Business Profile, complete with a summarized star rating.
According to a report from DemandSage, 93% of people make buying decisions based on online reviews, showcasing their influence.
13. Brand Mentions Across Platforms
Another one of the most effective ways to advertise is to encourage brand mentions on various platforms. By sharing high-value content that people love, people are more likely to mention your brand in a positive light.
Using social media listening tools like Sprout Social, you can see what people are saying about you and find ways to spread your name even more.
14. User-Generated Content (UGC)
Among the more efficient ways to advertise your business is through user-generated content, or UGC. This content comes from your audiences and may appear on social media or your website, showing how people use your products or otherwise interact with your brand.
There’s no shortage of ways to entice people to create UGC, from influencer partnerships and social media contests using branded hashtags to giveaways and other strategies that bring your audiences together online.
You could then repurpose this content in your marketing efforts, providing you with plenty of earned assets.
Measuring and Analyzing Advertising Effectiveness
In determining how to promote your business locally and nationally, you need to be able to measure the results.
How you define success will depend on the goals you set. These goals should be SMART (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic/Relevant, and Timely), helping you get the most from your advertising without falling below your expectations.
Take a look at industry benchmarks to help you determine which goals to set for your campaigns, and regularly track your campaigns using tools like Google Analytics 4, Google Search Console, and other solutions. Reviewing regular reports, you can gain insights into performance that may inform your decisions down the road.
As you optimize your efforts over time, you will be able to perfect your strategy to get the best results.
FAQs
1. How can I determine the best advertising channel for my business?
The best way to advertise your business will depend on numerous factors, including your target audiences and where they spend their time, your industry, and your brand identity. Look into your target market and competitors to help you decide on the best platforms for your advertising and marketing efforts.
2. What is the difference between digital and traditional advertising?
While digital advertising connects with audiences online through paid media ads, search engine results, video marketing, and more, traditional advertising can include everything from print ads and direct mail to TV commercials. What is the best way to advertise your business? The answer is both when used collaboratively.
3. How do I measure the success of my advertising campaigns?
As you try to figure out how to advertise your business locally or nationally, you must measure your campaigns’ success. You can do so by setting clear and realistic goals to determine which metrics to track, with tools like Google Analytics 4 available to help you measure critical key performance indicators (KPIs).
4. What are cost-effective advertising strategies for small businesses?
When looking for the best way to advertise your small business for free or for little money, consider strategies like email marketing and search engine optimization that require less money going in but can result in potentially high ROI.
Find the Best Ways to Advertise Your Business With Ignite Visibility
Want some help with your advertising strategy? Ignite Visibility is here to provide you with a fully tailored solution based on your specific requirements. We have years of experience behind us as a leading digital marketing agency, with the resources and expertise needed to help your business thrive.
Want to know what sets us apart? We’ll be able to:
- Identify your target audience and segment it
- Determine which platforms your audiences and competitors use
- Develop a unique brand identity and voice to help you connect with audiences
- Target all relevant platforms with optimized ads and other content
- Continually track your progress to inform future decisions
- And more!
If you want to get started with your own campaign, reach out to us today for a free proposal.
